


Raspberry Swirl

by Jane St Clair (3jane)



Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-08
Updated: 2011-08-08
Packaged: 2017-10-22 09:47:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/236726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/3jane/pseuds/Jane%20St%20Clair
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cordelia does Slayer-sitting duty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Raspberry Swirl

She's gotten used to Dennis-ghost, even though she swears  
sometimes she can feel his not-there fingers running down her  
back in the night.  And dark rooms in the office, which all  
things considered are probably A Good Thing, since Angel's not  
the kind of boss to get pissy with her if she takes an hour or  
four off for an audition, and he'd be hard to replace, and anyway  
the mess you get from dusting a vampire isn't the sort she wants  
to be responsible for cleaning up.  And having Wesley around,  
though he isn't exactly the ex-boyfriend she wanted to be haunted  
by in her new, grown-up life.  

She's gotten used to the horrible, fiery headaches that Doyle  
left her with that one sweet and oh-so-strange-and-hot kiss.  The  
one that even now she lies awake at night and thinks about.    
Thinks about blue spines, and what they might have felt like  
running up and down the insides of her thighs.  What it might  
have been like to lay down with someone her own height, instead  
of being a tiny body against a huge one.  Thinks that maybe the  
pain is sometimes OK, because it reminds her of him, and Doyle  
isn't a thing she wants to forget about anytime soon.

She's even mostly got used to being poor.  Of all the things that  
suck, though, that one sucks the most.  Because it's rearranged  
her so completely.  It's not just the clothes she misses, though  
God knows the clothes were nice, and she misses her shoe rack  
with the kind of pain that most other people reserve for sort-of-  
loved relatives.  The steel wall money built around her was nice,  
but she thinks maybe she's ready to live without that.  Get out  
and breathe the very un-Sunnydale air of LA and get just a little  
bit dirty.  Maybe skin her knee the odd time.  Maybe find  
somebody with a pair of handcuffs who could skin several other  
things, and have a real night of it.

Down and dirty can be A Good Thing.  Not Martha Stewart-y at all.

She misses her princesshood really quite a lot.  Money was good  
for that.  It was that teflon-slick extra layer she put on every  
morning on top of clothes and shoes and make-up.  The Bad Things  
that happened to people (not good people, necessarily, but just  
the kind of people who might pop into the 7-11 at twilight for a  
grape slurpee and an Evian chaser) didn't stick to her quite as  
much.  Stuck sometimes, of course, but not quite as much.

She's learned since then that a Sev in Los Angeles is a very  
different thing from a Sev in Sunnydale.  More drug dealers  
outside, for one, and the floors have that extra-grubby quality  
that means that not only will you not be seeing your face in  
them, but you might want to curl your bare toes up in your  
sandals to keep them as far away from the linoleum as possible.    
On the other hand, she's more anonymous, and when she needs a  
sugar-shock, it's the place to be.

Girl at the counter moves really, really slow, like Cordelia's  
told her not to make any sudden moves.  While holding some huge  
scary-sharp thing purloined from Angel's Closet of Death.

Somewhere in the back, there's a girl who really obviously was a  
guy a couple of weeks ago.  New breasts, too big and still  
awkward.  And the hips aren't right.  She thinks about going back  
and giving him (her?) walking lessons.

Look, you've got a pelvis.  You've got the shoes.  Just let your  
hips rock when you move.  Right.

Flashes back on a very surreal afternoon giving the same advice  
to Willow.  Both of them in Cordelia's room, playing something  
that was very nearly dress-up out of Cordelia's closet.  Willow  
in a distinctly not-floral skirt and a pair of sling-back pumps,  
stumbling like she'd broken both her ankles.  Funny-wrong for  
Willow to be that awkward.  It was part of her whole Willow-  
thing to float with her feet just above Mother Earth.

Remembers getting up and walking up behind Willow and pressing  
the red-head back against her.  One arm across her hips, one  
across those almost-not-there breasts in their cute floral bra  
cups.

Saying, *Look.  Move against me.  You lean _back_, you step  
_out_, you move _up_, your hips move _here_.*

Marched Willow across the room like that, pressed skin-tight  
against her back, until her shoes stopped making earthquake  
shocks.  She'd had this plan to let Willow go and let her keep  
walking.  *I'm riding my bike mommy!  I'm riding!*, or possibly  
*Fly free, little bird!* But instead she stopped, and Willow  
stopped with her, and she stood for a good minute with her right  
hand on that tiny hip and her left on that tiny breast, feeling  
Willow's nipple push out and into her palm.

She let Willow go, finally.  Stepped back.  Smirked.  *Ha!  I  
have taught the geek to walk!* And went back to sitting cross-  
legged in the middle of the typhoon of her wardrobe.

None of which has anything to do with teaching drag queens to  
walk, really.  She wonders if this is like teaching pigs to sing,  
then snorts purple ice up her nose when she tries to stop  
laughing.  Quick, hard flash of sinus pain, and she decides it's  
time to go home, 'cause it's at least an hour past the time when  
all Good Girls were in bed.

Which of course is the problem.  The only good girl gracing her  
apartment is god-help-us Wesley, and thinking of him that way is  
Mean and Wrong.  (Funny.  True.)  Except he went home an hour  
ago, when Angel showed up with the Evil Thing and told Cordelia  
to babysit.

When she calls home to Sunnydale, she gets told stories about  
Xander and Spike and a roll of duct tape, and when Angel came in,  
pretty much the same process came to mind.  Tape Faith to a  
chair.  Leave her there.  Feed her pig's blood out of a plastic  
bad now and then.  Molest her at unpredictable moments.

Which is suddenly both Eww and not-Eww, and she doesn't know  
whether she was more grossed by the prospect of bodily fluids in  
her fridge or by the sticky-messy-bad-dangerous-oh-so-very-wrong  
thing that is Sex with Faith.

Dennis-ghost greets her at the door with a quick swirl of not-  
thereness that's his substitute for a kiss.  He's more tentative  
since she yelled at him, and she feels bad about that.  He was  
trying to protect her, after all, and if she'd paid attention she  
wouldn't be sporting her current battered-wife look.  One of the  
dealers outside the Sev stopped her and offered to beat up the  
fucker who'd done it.  And if Angel hadn't made her promise to  
Slayer-sit, which seemed to imply leaving her charge in one  
piece, she would have taken Mr Scuzzy-man up on it.  Let him go a  
few rounds with the Evil Thing.  If Faith were loose, he wouldn't  
have a chance, but tied up . . .

"Thanks, babe.  You shouldn't have."  Faith holds out an  
unreasonably pretty hand towards Cordelia's slurpee.  Even with  
Cordelia's irritation to mute it, though, the joke sounds  
brittle.  Faith looks like death.  Or maybe not.  She looked like  
death when she faced Cordelia the first time today.  Too dark and  
lithe, like she could just slide under doors, get in anywhere you  
didn't want her.  Too able to hurt.  Now she just looks dead.    
Beaten to a bloody pulp, inside as well as outside, and too  
shocked to fall down.

The instant Cordelia came around the corner and Faith stepped  
out, the second before she got hit, she'd thought she was looking  
into a mirror.  Big dark eyes and long dark hair, both of them  
with the kind of killer cheekbones that other women pay plastic  
surgeons to construct.  But Faith isn't like her.  Not really.    
She looks dirty.  She looks like she's been crying.

Cordelia throws her the Evian.  Watches her twist off the cap too  
carefully, like she expects the tips of her fingers to come off.    
Watches Faith wrap her lips around the mouth of it and drink, and  
she has to have forgotten that Cordelia's there, because it just  
isn't as obscene as it could be.  Only Faith drinking.  For a  
second, her tongue slips out and catches a loose drop from off  
the cap threads, but it disappears back between those too-red  
lips like an animal disappearing down a hole.

"You could go wash your face," Cordelia says suddenly.    
"Bathroom's through there."  

And watches her go.  Faith's moving like the rest of them -- a  
little bit broken and hurting really a lot.  But even that turns  
into a double-jointed swing of the hips just before she  
disappears through the door.

Cordelia leaves her slurpee and follows Faith into the bathroom.    
Finds her there bent over the sink and staring into the mirror  
from close range.

Cordelia says, "You can't see the bruises because they're not on  
your face.  You're thinking of me."  In the reflection, she can  
see she's purple now.  When Angel woke her, he stroked the shiner  
for a long time, and it took her a minute to realize that it  
wasn't just sympathy.  He'd be able to smell all the blood  
pooling under her skin.  Not a thought she likes.

"What?  Oh.  Sorry."

Cordelia raises an eyebrow, then flinches when the skin pulls  
tight over her swollen cheek.

"Kiss it better for you?"  Smirking now.  She expects Cordelia to  
back down.

She doesn't.  Instead, she tilts her cheek forward, lets the  
vanity lights expose all the different pretty colours her face  
has turned.

Brush of long fingers over her face.  Faith's turned now, but  
still leaning against the sink with her body almost out of reach.    
Just one long, thin arm reaching out to probe the damage.    
Cordelia wouldn't have expected her to be so gentle.  It's just a  
breath of a touch, skin on hot, hurt skin.

Then Faith rolls up out of her lean like a snake and arches  
forward and presses her mouth to the hurt place.  Not a dry  
mother-kiss, either.  Wet lips, smearing lipstick, trace of a  
tongue rubbing against the contusion.  Which tilts down and  
morphs into a lip-lock, during which Faith's long, slender slut-  
body presses Cordelia back against the open door.

And she can grin, because Faith thinks she's holding all the  
knives now, and she isn't.  All Cordelia has to do is enjoy the  
kiss and still be able to step back and smirk once it's over.    
Which she does, and gets the rare privilege of seeing Faith  
disheveled and angry and a little bit hurt.

Runs her tongue over her teeth.  She feels vicious.  "Hmm.    
Interesting -- I always wanted to know what 'skank' tasted  
like."  It's not even very original, but it feels good to say.    
Because a lot of her just wants to fuel Faith's self-hatred.  She  
might feel bad, but there's a good chance that's because she *is*  
bad.  Cordelia got to clean the worst blood off Wesley's body  
tonight, and she has a set of washcloths that aren't ever going  
to recover.  He had the stiff-upper-lip thing going on, but she  
knew him, and he was about six breaths away from just crying.    
Faith did that.

So she turns away and goes back out to the living room, curls up  
and watches TV.  Her slurpee is melting, but not too fast, and  
the liquid purple is very, very good.  In between sucks on the  
straw, she presses the cup to the hurt on her face, and that's  
good too.

"I'm sorry."  Faith.  Back in front of her, somehow, but at least  
not blocking the TV.  She's kneeling, which leaves Cordelia a lot  
of room to watch cartoon X-Men, something Xander taught her to  
like, over her head.

"I'm sorry."  Faith's crawled closer.  Her knees are up against  
the base of Cordelia's chair now.  Her tousled head framed by  
Cordelia's knees.  She kneels up, blocking the TV, but it's such  
a stupid, childish challenge that Cordelia ignored her, looks  
through her and imagines she's still rich so that Faith will be  
that much less important.

"I'm sorry."  And a lap full of Faith.  Elbows braced on either  
side of her hips.  Clever fingers that unbutton Cordelia's blouse  
without her feeling it and pull back the sides so that Faith can  
lean in and kiss between her breasts.  Lips.  Tongue.  Another  
little smear of lipstick left as a souvenir.

It feels good.  The kiss was only a kiss, but this is the warmest  
touch she's had in months.  Not that she's exactly has no sex,  
since she does get the odd date.  But nobody who wanted more than  
to get her knees apart and bang, and those go out the door as  
soon as she can get them out of bed.  Faith isn't even moving  
lower, just expanding her kisses to brush the top of each breast,  
leaving warm-wet tracks behind her.

Big dark eyes watching her, because Faith does look up  
occasionally.  There's a cut on her forehead that Cordelia might  
have cleaned and bandaged if she'd been feeling more charitable.  
Instead, she concentrates on not giving anything away, except  
enough to make Faith not stop what she's doing.  Because it's  
good.  Warm.  Making her toes curl and her panties drip.  

Better, even, when the fingers unbutton her blouse the rest of  
the way and push it back, then inch back up and lift one breast  
out of her bra cup.  Faith just holds it in both hands and looks  
for a minute, so Cordelia looks too.  It's a nice breast.  If it  
wasn't, she would have done something about it by now, because  
you don't get acting jobs without the tits to back it up.  

Then that animal-tongue reaches out and traces the aureole's rim,  
spirals in to the tip, licks across it hard.  Strokes her and  
*fuck* it feels good.  Two hands holding her breast up to be  
worshiped.  The thumbs rub back to touch her ribcage, then sweep  
forward, ending with the nipple caught between them.  And pinch  
for a minute.  Twist.  Cordelia gasps.

Faith looks up at her again, but swallows whatever look she was  
going to give.  Instead noses the second breast out of its cup  
and sucks it gently while her thumbs stay working on the first  
one.  Teeth at odd moments that remind her of vampires in exactly  
the way a Slayer's teeth really shouldn't.

She's melting.  Everything between her legs is liquid and aching  
and her breasts are all electric, charged by the scrape of teeth  
and tongue across them.  In a second, she's going to whimper, and  
that's *really* going to give up more than she wants to.

Faith's hands come up behind her and unhook her bra.  The blouse  
slides off her shoulders backward, and the satin underneath comes  
off forward into Faith's hands.  Only instead of dropping it like  
she did the blouse, Faith lifts the bra up to her face and  
breathes through it for a minute and that's just too weird.  Like  
she's going to hunt Cordelia by smell alone.

The fingers are working again, this time at the waist of her  
shorts, and she isn't ready for that yet.  Cordelia snakes a hand  
between them and jerks Faith's chin up before realizing that's  
probably a Really Bad Idea, because whatever else, Faith's a  
Slayer, and she could probably break Cordelia's wrist if she just  
turned her head hard.  She doesn't, though.  Just looks for a  
long minute, then grins, and the look is absolutely wolfish.    
What Oz must look like if he ever cracks a smile.  Faith has  
striking incisors -- not vampire-long, but very *there*.  And a  
body like a snake, which Cordelia noticed before, but the  
observation didn't really make her ready for how quickly Faith  
could roll up and be not just in her lap but on it, and kissing  
her.

She should have a license for that tongue.  It's clearly got a  
life of its own, and if it isn't a pet, it's a dangerous animal.    
Scrapes her hard palate and her teeth one by one, reaches for the  
back of her throat.  Under the creak of Faith's leather pants,  
Cordelia can smell arousal.  Reassuring, because if this was only  
good for her, she was going to have to make them stop, she really  
was.  And she doesn't want to anymore.  She hurts from the whole  
miserable day, and she deserves whatever feeling-better Faith can  
offer.

The shirt in front of her is one she wouldn't ever have bought  
for herself, and normally she wouldn't even appreciate it, but  
it's stretched across breasts that are at least as spectacular as  
her own, which makes it hard to miss.  Hard to pull off as well,  
but Faith rolls out of the lycra and cotton like she's shedding a  
skin.  The bra underneath is the kind the Sunnydale Cordelia  
would have imagined she'd have -- thin and skanky, like something  
a hooker would wear with nothing over it at all.  The L.A.  
Cordelia wonders how Faith manages to fight in it.  But it comes  
off.  And there's a breast close enough to her mouth that she can  
just reach in and close her teeth not very gently around the tip.

Faith hisses and jerks back, pulling the skin out of Cordelia's  
mouth.  She stands back, and for a second Cordelia thinks she's  
going to back out, and tries to decide whether to be smug that  
she's not the only one with her shirt off.

But instead Faith flows back to her knees and unbuttons  
Cordelia's shorts and pulls insistently.  She has to push herself  
back to get enough weight off her hips for them to come off, and  
in that second she's aware of just how naked she's getting.    
Because Faith's fingers are hooked in her panties too, and she's  
already braless, and her breasts are thrust out and moving while  
she's got her back arched.  Faith isn't grinning now, but she's  
focused.  She pushes the clothes away and gets a hand under each  
of Cordelia's knees, pulling her down and pushing them apart.

The first brush of the tongue against her labia is fantastic.    
Faith pauses there, breathing in the smell of her skin and pubic  
hair, then tilts her nose down into the dark hair and pushes her  
tongue deeper, between the curved lips and up inside.

Cordelia hisses.  It feels unbelievably good.  Nobody's ever done  
this for her before.  She imagines in odd moments that Wesley  
might have, if she'd let him, but she was nervous then if she  
couldn't see a man's face.  Tries not to think too hard about the  
fact that it isn't a man's face between her legs now.  That  
there's still at least *some* lipstick on the lips that're  
wrapped around her clit and tugging a little.  It's more  
information than she can process, and this is too good.  Tongue  
on her clit, lips on her clit, finger on her clit and the tongue  
running up and down between her labia for a dozen long, fantastic  
strokes.  Then it pushes up inside and *reaches*, and for a  
second she imagines that Faith could reach her heart that way,  
kill her and leave her sticky and incredibly pleasured but  
unfortunately dead.

A finger replaces the tongue.  Not as wonderful at first.  This  
much she's done on her own.  But then it curls in and *rubs*  
while the mouth goes back to working on her clit, and another  
finger pushes in to join it.  And a third.

It's a lot.  She's stretching a little now.  Twisting her pelvis  
to press harder against Faith's mouth.  Her breasts ache, and for  
a second she'd furious that Faith can't work on those, too.    
Gives it up for futile and brings her own hands up.  Pinches,  
twists.  Does both hard, remembering Faith's hands and the pain  
they inflicted, how it ran all the way down and spread out there  
into something warm and sharp.  

The resolution she made to be quiet died somewhere along the way.    
She isn't loud, but there are definite whimpers and hisses coming  
from between her lips.  Then something that would be a shriek if  
she had any breath left for it, because Faith tucks a forth  
finger up her and presses very hard against her clit at the same  
time, and Cordelia comes.  Twists her hips frantically against a  
face that's only too willing too move with her and ride it out.

Until she finally relaxes and Faith raises her hand, pulls the  
fingers out, two and two, careful.  And Cordelia looks down at  
the nails and flinches, realizing how much damage they could have  
done.

"Hey, if I wanted it to hurt, you'd know."  Sickly cheerful.  But  
she looks down and there's a lot of hurt and a lot of tired  
around Faith's eyes.  And something that looks a lot like just  
horny.

Cordelia thinks about reciprocating, but she's not sure she's  
ready to do that, and she's also not sure she wants to get down  
on her knees in front of Faith.  So she just watches while Faith  
stands and stretches and grins at her a little with a face that's  
decidedly sticky.

She wants to watch Faith come.  Thinks for a minute, then raises  
on knee slightly.  Watches Faith's eyes widen.

"*Fuck*, C."

Cordelia nods.  "Uh-huh.  That's the idea."

Faith waits for a beat, then unzips the leather jeans and bends  
over to slide them down.  Spreads her legs and settles with  
Cordelia's knee hard up against her.  And starts moving.

There are people who pay money to watch shows like this one, she  
thinks.  Beautiful woman rubbing herself to orgasm with every  
wrench of her hips.  But pretty, too, in a way Cordelia hasn't  
seen much since she came to L.A.  Like a kid, which she still  
really is.  Faith isn't much older than she is, which means that  
she can't be more than nineteen or twenty.  

She's panting hard when she raises her eyes to meet Cordelia's,  
and Cordelia's struck by how raw she looks.  Faith with a man is  
a slick, glossy slut who doesn't give anything away, but right  
now she looks like someone's taking off her skin.  Like she hurts  
enough that Cordelia can stop thinking about how much she hurts  
herself and reach out a hand to touch one too-sharp cheekbone.    
Gets the touch in, but only just, because Faith turns and catches  
her forefinger and sucks on it.  Lets it stay hooked against her  
cheek when she opens her mouth in a quiet, agonized whimper that  
marks her orgasm.

Cordelia holds the other arm out.  It's as much of an offer as  
she's going to make, but Faith comes into it, tucks herself up  
against Cordelia and rests there for a minute.  Dark hair  
spreading over Cordelia's breasts.  Other nipples stroking hers.

She remembers looking into a vampire's eyes -- not Angel's -- at  
close range, and thinks how Faith's are different.  There's a lot  
of bad -- and it is bad, even Faith knows it -- but not evil.  
Cordelia's aware of how easily this could have been her in  
another life.  One where she was born with no money and way too  
much destiny and had to get dirty before she was ready.

And she feels funny, because she's sorry for Wesley, genuinely.    
But Faith in her arms is a mass of raw pain that she can't ignore  
just at the moment, and not only because of her nakedness and how  
close that makes them.  

Dennis-ghost is close by her shoulder.  Subdued.  His touch  
brushes her shoulder briefly, but she can see it run all the way  
down Faith's back.  Cat-rise of her spine as she follows it.

"Christ that felt good.  Thanks."

Cordelia almost blushes, but then she realizes that for some  
reason Faith didn't mean the sex but the touch that came after  
it.  Cordelia opens her mouth, but the words coming out of it  
aren't a denial, so she swallows them.  Dennis turns the heat up  
for them, just enough so they won't freeze while they're lying  
like this.  Which is A Good Thing.  Because Faith's a warm,  
strangely soft thing in her arms, and she's going to hang onto it  
for a few minutes while she thinks of what to do next.


End file.
